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Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The Avengers

The movie is great, amazing even. It is exactly what it was built up to
be, and possibly even more. It is full to the brim with Whedonesque
humor and amazing fight scenes, as well as good character development
for those who didn't get their own movies, though doing less for those
who did. The humor I think was quite possibly the best done part, with
laughs at all the right moments, and none during the tense moments.

Loki works well as a villain in this movie only because he is clearly
not the biggest threat, he is captured early on and shows that he is
merely the one who opens the gate, the aliens are the true villains.
This works especially well because we have seen him beaten before,
whereas this new threat is untested, and when fighting earth's mightiest
heroes they better be good.

As for the heroes themselves they were amazing, with the sheer power of
Hulk and Thor shown extremely well in their fight scene, throwing around
power that would cripple any lesser being. The Hulk I think is actually
one of the best characters in the movie, because everyone is waiting
for him to come out, but Banner still puts on a good performance and
gives a good reason for not wanting him to. Iron Man is shown to be one
of the most versatile if not most powerful members, dueling with Thor
on almost equal footing, if only because ranged spam defeats melee. We
got Captain America showing the power of a vibranium shield, and Hawkeye
showing that an arrow can do a lot more than expected. The only one who
kind of disappointed was Black Widow, but since she was out of her
element it was fairly expected, and she still performed admirably.

Let me just say that Hawkeye actually works really well. Before I felt
he would be clearly outclassed and be reduced to basic ranged support,
but as a villain in the first half and competent spotter and precision
damage worked really well, with explosive and EMP arrows allowing him to
deal with robots. He also got a fair amount of characterization through
Black Widow despite his little screen time. I mean previously he had
what, like 1 minute in the Incredible Hulk? Samuel L. Jackson did
everything that was expected of him, pulling off the all-knowing leader
well, and delivering the cool confidence necessary for the role, I now
know exactly why they chose him as the inspiration for Ultimate Nick.

The plot was solid, and the 2 and a half hours just don't seem quite
enough to contain everything that was shown in the film. I don't know
what to say, other than I'm not really familiar with the aliens they
used, but I only really know the Skrull empire, so I don't know my
Marvel aliens that well. They worked well as mooks, though it would have
been nice if they had some big bruiser elites for the Hulk and the like
to fight on sort of even terms. Also the Hulk is now officially
invincible, in that a headshot while Banner did not kill him. Maybe he
can be killed in Hulk form, but I seriously doubt it. So he will
definitely be a foe of the Avengers at some point in the future,
possibly at the end of 2.

I've got more to say but it'll be better organized in the morning. The
long and short of it was the movie was amazing, and I have more faith in
Joss Whedon than I did before, at least his scriptwriting prowess, and
this is coming from someone that has loved everything he has previously
done, excluding some seasons of Buffy and Angel. I don't like assigning
numbers to reviews, but this is the closest to a perfect Avengers movie
we'll ever seem, and it was beautiful.